Tag: Sun

Sorry. Had to be done. But c’mon, admit it. There are few phrases more annoying than “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity” (ed. note: Number one: “Looks like somebody has a case of the Mondays”). But with about one in three Americans in the middle of a heat wave, maybe these people are on to something.

The National Weather Service (ed. note: Apparently, they don’t make and deliver the weather, so we recommend “The National Weather Forecast Gang”) warns that most of the northeast and midwest US will be experiencing a heat wave right up until July 4th holiday. Alarmingly, reports of high temperatures plus high humidity will mean reading of over 100 on the heat index.

Wait. What in the name of my broiled sunburn is the heat index? So, answer – What is the heat index and do we care? Well, like most things there’s a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is “it’s how hot it is, and no, you really don’t care much beyond ‘f*ck, it’s hot’, do you?” The long answer is still pretty interesting. All the heat index represents is how hot it FEELS. Think wind chill, but with less wind and definitely less chill.

This chart, handily provided by the good people at NOAA, shows that basically, the more humidity you add to higher temperatures, the more it feel like three rats getting intimate in a wool sock (ed. note: Hot and unpleasant. Especially for the third rat. He’s always left out).

Note the density of orange and red in the chart. Red and orange never mean good things on a chart; this applies especially to a chart of Starburst flavors (ed. note: Yellow rules. Fight me if you disagree). It also means that if its above 90 degrees (that’s in freedom units…works out to 32 centigrade) and it’s humid, you’re gonna have a bad time. Except this bad time means your dog and/or elderly relative might die of heat stroke.

OK, great. We have a chart that tells us when the outside feels like sitting in a fat man’s armpit. But, I can hear you thinking is there a handy equation I can use to calculate the heat index? No. There most assuredly is not. There IS an equation, but handy it ain’t. Here it is (where T = Temp in Fahrenheit and R = Relative humidity):

Good lord, that certainly doesn’t help. So, what the heat index tells us, despite the obvious (it’s hot) and its cumbersome math is that prolonged exposure to a mix of high temps and humidity can have a seriously deleterious effect on people and pets (ed. note: this means you can get heat exhaustion or the much more serious heat stroke). A high temp one day can be more or less dangerous than the same temp the following week. Take the right precautions; such as:

Hydrate. Lots

Light weight, loose clothing

Hydrate. That means water, not margaritas, which despite being delicious aren’t helpful here

Wear a hat. And would it kill you to wear some sunscreen?

Alternate sun time with cooling down in the shade time

And the next time some slack-jawed doofus tries to tell you that it isn’t the heat, it’s the humidity, you can tell them no, it’s actually the heat index. And then you can show them the above equation and then beat them to death with a shovel.

…it looks suspiciously like it’s the same size as the sun. What the hell, right? Is it a conspiracy? Is the moon just the sun’s ‘CLOSED‘ sign? Well, it turns out it’s just astronomical coincidence, and it’s one that occasionally makes for some pretty spectacular events.

Let’s start with a couple of basics: D&D. No, not the dice-centric roleplaying game. D&D in this case are of the celestial variety: distance and diameter. Look at the sun. (Ed. note: No…stop that. Don’t look at the sun. It’s bad for your eyes. Jesus. I’ll be more specific.) CONSIDER the sun. It’s about 864,000 miles across, plus or minus the distance between Detroit and Chicago. That’s a lot of miles across the solar equator. But…the sun is also really far away. Like 93 million miles far. In short, the sun is big and far.

Now, there’s the moon. Also big, also far. Just not as big or as far as the bright shiny thing you use to work on your summer tan. The moon’s diameter is a relatively tiny 2,160 miles across…basically the distance between Philadelphia and Salt Lake City – not even all the way across the continental US. But, it’s closer too. Much closer. Only a short 239,000 miles away (and moving farther away every day; but that’s a story for another time).

So, to sum up: Sun – big and far. Moon – less big and less far. But, there’s a proportional aspect. The sun 864,000 mile diameter is almost exactly 400 times bigger across than our moon (400.3415 times to be exact). However, the distance between the sun and the earth is 389 times the distance between you and the thing that makes tides AND werewolves.

And that ration of 389:400 is close enough so that our simple vision makes the two seem to be the same size, which in turn makes for really, really cool things like eclipses once in a while. The next really good one will be a total lunar eclipse Friday July 27th (2018), visible to our friends in on pretty much every continent EXCEPT north america. This site helps keep track of any upcoming astronomical events, like eclipses, meteor showers, rise of Cthulhu and the Dark Ones…you know, the usual space stuff.

LOOK TO THE SKIES. …except during the day, because that sh*t will make you blind.